Andrew Richenderfer with Xuan Gao
Exfoliation of Graphene
Graphene has a molecular structure made up of one single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb formation, and is the first two-dimensional (2D) crystalline material identified. It is of significant research interest as it possesses a range of exceptional and potentially beneficial properties such as mechanical strength, electrical and thermal properties and unusual quantum effects. The biggest challenge facing graphene towards application is the availability of the material and the lack of synthesis method on any reasonable scale. The objective of this project is to explore new methods besides the mechanical exfoliation (‘Scotch tape’ method) to extract graphene from commercially available graphite products such as pyrolytic graphite (PG) or highly ordered thermal pyrolytic graphite (TPG). The electrical transport quality of the exfoliated single layer or few layer graphene will be studied by field effect transistor characterization.